Rise of Industry is a neat looking industry simulation game that went just over my head immediately when I started playing it, even going through the tutorial. I think it might be a product of how sandboxy it felt and how every mechanic and system is available immediately even if you had zero time to understand how any of it works, so I dropped it fairly quickly. I really love its artstyle, tho!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Shapez is a streamlined factory management game where the things you build are colored shapes in their most abstract senses. Starting very simple and quickly building up the complexity, I had a really good time with a game that was not too concerned about optimizing and making the most of limited resources. Creating complex patterns of machines that would take shapes and colors, cut them, rotate them and fuse them without any kind of stress was really enjoyable. It became a bit too complex for me at some point and I couldn’t really figure out what to do, so I dropped the game, but otherwise I had a great time!

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
CategoriesSimulation, 4/5

From the outside looking in, Big Pharma seemed like one of these “factory games” to me, where you would manage a pharmaceutical company, trying to build machines and combine products into more and more efficient medicines while discovering new technologies and improving your setup at your pace. I was a bit disappointed with the scenario-based approach of the game and the more puzzle-based systems. Big Pharma is probably really neat for some people, but it didn’t scratch the itch I wanted personally!

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Cook, Serve, Delicious is one of these franchises that I really enjoy and would love to devour entirely if I had infinite time. I love the fast cooking action that you can learn to master, the rush of the orders, the mashing of the keys and the perfect gold medal that you get at the end. It’s not without its lot of frustrations, for sure, and there were some parts of 2 that I preferred over 3, but for the things it tries and the new ideas it brings to the table, CSR3 is a pretty good game!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories4/5, Simulation

Technopoly has an interesting idea - building around structures on an island, improving resource production until you have enough to build bridges to different islands, rinse and repeat, with a fine art style and some interesting flavor. Sadly, you need to pay real money or watch ads to do pretty much everything. The most egregious offender is about the bridges you build between islands, which get doled out at a glacial pace if you don’t want to pay premium currencies. That’s all.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Bleentoro is a strange, yet interesting puzzle game inspired by Factorio playable on iOS. In each level you need to create factories in order to meet specific objectives, usually related to creating a certain number of a specific resource under a certain time. Starting simple enough with a bunch of new mechanics getting added as you progress through the levels, poor controls and confusing inconsistencies prevented me to fully wrap my head around the game, even if I did have a good time with it.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Builderment is a neat little free factorio-a-like on iOS where you mine resources, build things, transform things, carry things around to transform them some more and use them to research new technologies, allowing you usually to build different things, but sometimes also serve as upgrades for your existing factories. The overall gameplay loop is fun enough and I had a good time, even if the existence of a premium currency used only for strange cosmetic buildings and the need to have gold if you want to build or upgrade things makes the economy of the game quite strange, and that being on IOS, the controls are not perfect either - although they do work nicely.

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

Mindustry is a strange mix of tower defense and factory management where you have to build miners, builders, conveyor belts, research upgrades and collect resources while at the same time defending from enemies that attack your structures in waves using turrets and other means of defense. This game has proven too stressful for me, too unwieldy to play on the iPad, and ultimately too difficult.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Satisfactory is a first person simulation game where you land on a remote planet and must discover new technologies, build bases and fend off against the wildlife. I would easily describe this as “like factorio, but in 3D”, but it is a bit reductive. Satisfactory has a lot of charm, a really neat style and good ideas, but I feel like being in three dimensions hurts it in a few ways and that most parts of the game have elements that clearly overwhelmed me. It’s still really good! I’m not sure I’ll keep up with its development, but I’ll certainly recommend it!

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AuthorJérémie Tessier

I was looking for a factorio-alike on iOS to give me my fix of belts, resource production and maths when I stumbled upon Sandship: Crafting factory. A free-to-play title where you run a huge ship going through a desert, building internal facilities to craft various items, complete missions, level up and keep at it with new content always showing up. The core mechanics are okay, but the free to play timers, boosters and other tricks ruined the experience for me, as they usually do in this kind of game.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Factorio is an incredible game of crafting, research and automation where you crashland on a planet with almost no resources and nothing available to you until you manage to create a sprawling base filled with machines building everything you could ever dream of. Its got depth, challenge and plenty of time-filling action trying to optimize systems, perfect processes and optimize solutions. I had an absolute blast with it!

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories5/5, Simulation

Slime Rancher is a simulation game where you manage a ranch filled with cute slimes. Armed with a vacuum gun, you move them around, feed them, expand your ranch, explore the world around your ranch, find new species of slimes, gain upgrades and repeat this loop. I didn’t have a great time with it, sadly - I was looking forward to trying this game - because I found the normal ‘Adventure’ mode to be extremely aimless. I do enjoy a game of that style - I had a blast with Graveyard Keeper earlier this year, for instance - but the lack of objectives combined with technical issues made me put down Slime Rancher quicker than I would’ve hoped.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Graveyard Keeper is a neat twist on the farming simulator genre where instead of a proper farm - although you can have a small one - you run a graveyard. Filled with way too many things to do as these games are, I had a really good time with it, up to the point where the volume of systems stacking on top of each other came crashing down on my impatience to complete the next tasks I would need to progress through the story. If you have infinite time and love slowly going through systems, I highly recommend Graveyard Keeper.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories4/5, Simulation

Duskers is a curious little game where you play someone stuck in a spaceship and you need to survive by exploring other vessels in order to collect resources to repair your ship and tools. To explore you have drones that you control either manually or by typing commands in a console. The game has a very interesting style and some neat mechanics - especially related to how you explore using your drones and the way everything breaks down over time - but the lack of direction and the fact that it’s one of these games where you need to restart when you lose (which I feel like I don’t enjoy as much these days, especially if a run lasts a few hours) made me drop it after one such run.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories3/5, Simulation

TIS-100 is a game where you program a fake computer using some kind of assembly language made of simple commands like MOV (to move things around), ADD (to add values to an accumulator), JMP (to jump to a label) and conditionals like JGZ (to jump to a label if the accumulator is greater than zero, for instance). The special thing about this TIS-100 computer is that you have a bunch of nodes physically located around each other and while they have a small space for you to write code, you can move values around and create complex programs. I had a really good time with it, even if I feel the game doesn't do enough to help non-programmers.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories4/5, Simulation

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is an okay version of Animal Crossing for mobile devices. It's not great, but it's not catastrophically bad either. I fell off it pretty quickly because what was there didn't catch me enough to keep me away from my 3DS and Vita, it's a campground simulation game where you collect fruits, bugs and fishes to give to animals in order to level up their friendship and get more stuff to decorate your camp with. The interactions are minimal and even if the whole package is well presented and isn't THAT different from mainline Animal Crossing games, the differences were enough to leave me uninterested.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Stardew Valley is a masterpiece of a game. It's a great Harvest Moon-alike, but it's much more than that. If I have one 'big' complaint about it is that there are too many things you can do. You can fish, farm, explore dungeons, you can date people and complete quests for a community center. If you want to focus on only a few things - like I did - you'll feel like you're missing out on other stuff to do. That's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things tho; Stardew Valley is a gem that I had a great time spending hours with. There are some little flaws here and there, but otherwise it's an all around success

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories5/5, Simulation

Poly Bridge is a really nice bridge building simulator in theory. While it brings a great number of puzzles with increasingly complex constraints and challenges, backed up by leaderboards and money limits to have you surpass yourself, it failed flat for me in the lack of help I was given once I just struggled endlessly on the same level. Going overbudget didn't help, not caring about the state of my bridge didn't help. I was just stuck and there was no real help in-game for me, which soured my experience and made me stop.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier

Blueprint Tychoon is a simulation game, a bit of a factory management mixed with light sim city touches that focuses on you constructing buildings in order to produce resources, move them around, build things with them, sell these things and/or build more complex things while managing the needs of your worker, pollution and supply routes. I enjoyed it quite a bit, although even after hours of play, some core concepts were still opaque to me and I never got into the eponymous "Blueprint" part of the title.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories4/5, Simulation

HPAWS is a really interesting little shop simulation game where you run a weapon shop, working with various smiths in order to research, build and sell the best weapons available and progress through a bunch of little quests in order to get fame, money and give experience to the buyers of your gear. I really enjoyed it and I wish I had more time to play it because the fun of discovering new recipes and upgrading your shop really hooked me. On the down side, there are a few options that this game really could've used to make the experience truly perfect.

Posted
AuthorJérémie Tessier
Categories5/5, Simulation
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